The Dryad Repository: A New Path for Data Publication in Scholarly Communication

“Dryad is an international repository for data underlying peer-reviewed articles in the basic and applied biosciences. Many datasets collected by academic researchers are not shared with the wider community even after findings based upon them are reported in the literature. Dryad is addressing this shortcoming via a consortium of biology journals, and a model linking the publication of data with the publication of associated scholarly articles. Dryad enables scientists to validate published findings, explore new analysis methodologies, repurpose data for research questions unanticipated by the original authors, and perform synthetic studies. A chief aim is to balance a need for low barriers inviting contribution from scientists and higher-level goals supporting data synthesis. Repository development is ongoing, and coincides with daily curatorial activities and a metadata-intensive research agenda.” See more at http://www.oclc.org/research/news/2011-03-24.htm